Game rules -- Introduction

This is a new type of media which combines a game/novel/audiobook together, and written with English, Chinese and programming languages. After using for a while, they will all come together. There is nothing new under the Sun, "War and Peace" was written in multiple "foreign" languages no matter which nationality one belongs to. "Lord of the Rings" was ladened with poems and singings when you read or listen. Those are just some of the inspirational works from which this product got ideas from and was trying to immitate. After all, if one listens and reads with a little bit of mind into it, any language of the world can become that of your own.

1. For the impatient, go to the bottom link, simply double click and then single click on the map center pointer to enter something that you want to say if you see the word "claim". Who knows, you may become a millionaire with pure luck. One more thing, claim as many points as you want. There is no restriction for that. The Earth is a pretty big place.

2. But for people who are serious about this game, it is better to read on.

Tired of reality TV shows? Try a reality Internet game. It is filled with combined excitements of "monopoly", "million dollar homepage", "eBay" and reality shows, but you don't need an audition to join the game. Everybody is welcome. Either a life or a game can be played out half realistically.

You can be of any age to play this game since we allow children to live on Earth. You must be 18 or older to enter or arrange a trade have your legal guardian to enter a trade. You must be 118 years or older to enter any obscene, derogatory, or objectionable languages on this site. ClaimTheEarth.com (or The Bank, the Host) reserves the right to replace your messages with the phrase "we honor your freedom of speech, but you are not old enough to post this sort of message" should any text on your properties be deemed unlawful, illegal, politically incorrect or detrimental to business. However, the Bank is not legally responsible for any content posted by players on the site or linked to other sites. As long as you keep the face of the Earth clean and presentable, whatever content you want to link to is none of our business.

The objective of the game is to stake claims on places on this virtual Earth, where you think will be highly desirable by others on the real Earth, frequently visited and inquired. During the process, the game will test your understanding of geography, history and human natures. It also tests your familiarity with computers and your ability to make strategic decisions were you get a chance to relive your life in a pristine newly discovered Earth. The funny thing about this new Earth is that it is our old Earth. If you get to be one of the first creatures roaming on this Earth, will you claim your house, your home town, the White house, Manhattan island, Rome, Mongolia, China, Russia, Canada or the Himalaya mountains? Oh, don't forget to stake claims in the oceans. You don't have to breathe any more in order to live under water in this new Earth . . .

Most important thing for you to consider is: where you would like to stake your claim in order for the property to be highly sought after by fellow human beings, in this half real and half imaginative Earth?

When you are not satisfied with the number of visitors gracing the areas that you have claimed, you can go to the "change the earth" section and do something about it and see whether you can make people visit your claimed areas more often. This will make you a more intelligent and advanced player and hopefully make the game more interesting while brushing up your skills and hobbies in socializing and community building while playing this game.

It is certainly interesting to see how other people would behave. How they come from behind, or fall from ahead in a half hypothetical scenario?

You will be matching wits against other players, entering into the exciting world of Web 2.0 and blogosphere, sharing your travel stories and photos, co-existing with the limits of the computer hardware and imperfection of this beta software. ClaimTheEarth.com, "the Bank" or "the host", will provide you with the game board (which is quite a big one) and watch you play. A little bit of understanding on how Internet and browsers work might help you gain a little edge, but not too much. You have to have relatively new versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox in Intel environment to play. Check Google Map supported browsers for details.

Just like living in the real world, even if there are still many things that people do not fully understand or can not predict, it is usually too late if they do not start staking claims to get the properties that they want. Learning while exploring is strongly encouraged, because tell you the truth, the Bank does not know how this game will end up with. That is what makes this game more exciting. The Bank will periodically publish analysis and comments to help players perfect their games. The Bank will also write comments about interesting player behaviors and newly discovered facts about a Earth starting from scratch.

3. The game will end and start over again when 1 / 4 of the Earth is occupied or 5 billion points are claimed, pending on how much the hardware can take. The term occupied is defined as having less than 0.004 degree of differences in either latitude or longitude (about several hundred meters or yards). Or in plain terms, if you click on the center of the map marker but can not enter a claim, then that means you can not claim that piece of real estate.

4. Your email is you only identification needed at the beginning of the game. By entering it, you agree to all the rules and terms of playing this game set by the Bank, which is still in beta testing. Keep your email address valid or your properties will become vacant lots up for grabs. Two weeks of bounced email will cause your property reclaimed by the Bank and claimable by other players. If you become one of the "richest persons on earth" in the game and get spammed too much, you are responsible for developing your own spam filtering schemes. The Bank disclaims any liability in your email problems as a result of your entering this game. With legal liability out of the way, The game hosts will do their best to minimize your spam problems.

Once you become one of the richest persons on Earth, if you want to link your email address to your profile and publish it, the Host will do that for you. If you want to keep a low profile and remain anonymous the Host will cooperate too.

5. Now comes the fun part. Each visit ("view", "appearance of the marker") to your property will worth $1, whether it is done by yourself or by others. Try to go close to (a.k.a. move the center of the map to) someone's property and see how their property value changes. That will probably prompt you to visit your own properties more often and watch the money grow on trees, well in this case, a tree like bubble. When you try to claim a piece of property but can't, because the vicinity is too already too crowded, you have given the property owners that are in you way an extra $10.

6. In order not to clutter the map, only 5 points closest to the center of the map will be displayed (the five closest points could be quite a distance away, if your center of the map is in a sparsely populated area) and with their values going up, each time the map center is changed.

7. Top 10% of the property owners with highest net worth of properties will receive reports periodically of their net worth and list of claimed properties (in latitudes and longitudes), if subscribed to the game news group. Players can hire close friends to visit their properties or visit their properties themselves. However automated programs visiting properties are not permitted. For people try to automate visits to their properties, their properties will be forfeited. As this game is a test of human nature it does not hurt for us to see who is the best networked individual with many friends to visit, or who is the most diligent lone ranger to relentlessly look at his/her own property with satisfaction. But we are not ready to see an Earth with many smart machines yet. Maybe that rule will change in future generations to make the game more interesting.

8. Top 10% of the richest property owners (having most visits) will have their email published on the www.ClaimTheEarth.com web site, with the value of the properties. This information will help other people negotiate trades with them in real monetary terms outside of this game.

Top 10% property owners with best advertising potential (having sign clicked most) will also have their email published for other people or company to trade with. If you have a sign often get clicked, other players might want to learn from you and Fortune 500 companies might contact you to post their signs.

9. Only trades with selling price over $100 will be honored and realized, with 5% transaction fee to the Bank for the change to take place.

10. The worth of a piece of property usually goes up, unless the next game starts or the property is reclaimed and open to public. The next trade of property has to worth 10% or more of the current property worth in order for the Bank to honor the change.

11. To negotiate a trade, buyers and sellers should initiate contact between themselves. Once negotiation is finalized via email, buyers and sellers are in agreements with the deal, and money have changed hands, then both parties need to contact the Bank and show proof of identification that deemed authentic, for the Bank to change the ownership of the properties.

12. The Bank reserve the rights to ask for ID in the following forms: email with keys, secret questions, personal picture ID, in person visits by public notary professionals or local legal representatives.

13. Each time when ownership of the property changes hands, it is also the time that a message can be changed on a property. So if you did not post a good message when you first stake the claim, you can think for a while and post something more profitable next time. The message/sign that you can use to claim a property include: an image, a link and a text message. The image, and link should be in the format of "http://SomeDomain.com/someWhere/someimage.gif" and "http://www.someDomain.com/someDirectory". Do not use HTML tag yet, <object < img src . . ., flash, movie, sound file, etc. as they are not supported. One other limitation is that a link, an image or a text message has to be less than 255 characters. This is an area needs improvements. If you post any message longer than 255 characters, you message might not be displayed the way you intended it to, and the Bank is not responsible for it. It is worth mentioning that "&" sign will be expanded to 5 characters ("&") as an XML rule. Other hints are available in FAQ and online blog, but the Bank disclaims any responsibility for not having your sign displayed properly, if you enter special characters in your links, text messages or images. In fact the Bank does not know what other special characters will do to your sign and has not tried to enter all kinds of media files in the popup bubble. If you have suggestions on how to have Java Script handle special characters better, we would like to hear from you (send mail to TheBank@claimtheearth.com), and will add them to future versions.

14. It is OK for the owner of the property to initiate a trade to self just to upgrade the property claiming message. In this case, it is just a transaction between the owner and the Bank with 5% transaction fee of the selling price to change a set of sign.

15. Due to the lack of location based reporting in traditional journalism, if one player deemed the location that s/he has just claimed to be news worthy, please mark the location with news worthy iconfor the link to appear on the story page for other players and public to follow. The location will also appear differently in the game to be more conspicuous.

16. For business advertisers who wants to break out of the "click-n-view" advertising model, you are welcome to place a product on earth and let other players to search for it by following this page. It will be fun, because you have the whole earth to hide your products and you will get very attentative and engaged web readers searching clues and hints for good deals from your company or personal blogs. If your product is really good, its ranking in value/price comparison page will climb, while your products will gain more prominent places in the game. You may also send email to TheHost@claimtheearth.com for your products to be featured in special locations in the game environment.

   Good luck and happy claiming!!!